NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/24/2020

I’m going to keep this short and sweet this week. I have taken my family on vacation for the first time in 2020, and I’m going to keep my focus where it needs to be: on producing a third straight winning football week and extending my +3,170 football run. I’m full steam ahead with my research and handicapping, but that leaves me a little less time to explain the birds and the bees of Week 2 and Week 3 in the NFL to you.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/17/2020

The time between Week 1 and Week 2 of the NFL season is one of my favorite times of the sports betting year. We have seven months between the Super Bowl in February and the start of the regular season in September. In those seven months, everyone and their sister has some kind of opinion about what the following season will entail. The NFL gets analyzed and overanalyzed and hyper-overanalyzed until we get to the point where people have talked themselves into Freddie Kitchens and the Browns winning the Super Bowl.

NFL Power Rankings Week 1
by Robert Ferringo - 9/10/2020

At the end of March, just weeks after The World Shutdown, people were already asking me, “Do you think there will be football this year?” My answer was always the same. And I’ve been unwavering in my belief that the NFL will absolutely, positively play and that we will have a full season. Why this unshakeable confidence? Because if you’ve been living in on paying attention to anything in this country over the last four decades, you would have come face-to-face with one immutable truth: never doubt the willpower of greed.

2020 NFL Power Rankings Post Draft
by Robert Ferringo - 5/1/2020

The NFL oddsmakers have their own version of NFL power rankings: futures odds. Yesterday I took a look at the teams that have seen the biggest movements in their futures odds, both positively and negatively, as a result of free agency and the draft. Those movements give bettors an idea about the direction in which public opinion is trending regarding certain teams. But today I wanted to try to organize the entire league based on how I see their prospects heading into the summer.

NFL Power Rankings Week 17
by Robert Ferringo - 12/24/2019

Merry Christmas! I made the trek north to Upstate New York to spend the holiday season with my family, friends and frigid temperatures. I'm going to keep this week's Power Rankings short and sweet. At this point, we know who everyone is and the hierarchy in the NFL is pretty well established.

NFL Power Rankings Week 16
by Robert Ferringo - 12/17/2019

The Los Angeles Chargers won 11 games last year and entered this season as a Super Bowl sleeper pick. Two weeks ago, they were mathematically eliminated from the postseason. How did they respond? They responded with a complete no-show last week at home against Minnesota. The Chargers turned the ball over seven times and slept their way through their worst blowout loss (39-10) in several years.

NFL Power Rankings Week 15
by Robert Ferringo - 12/10/2019

Life isn't fair. If you still believe that Santa Claus is real, then you may not realize that. For the rest of us, it's just a fact of life. Life isn't fair, and no one ever said it would be. So, no one wants to hear it when things don't break your way. That goes for the New Orleans Saints, who once again were completely screwed by poor officiating in a thrilling loss to San Francisco.

NFL Power Rankings Week 14
by Robert Ferringo - 12/3/2019

In the NFL, this is moving time. This is the time of the year that the top teams maneuver their way to bye weeks and home-field playoff games, positioning themselves for a potential championship run. For the next tier, this is the month in which the contenders and the pretenders sort themselves out as they grasp for those final fleeting playoff slots.

NFL Power Rankings Week 13
by Robert Ferringo - 11/26/2019

It is Thanksgiving week, so I am doing an abridged version of my NFL Power Rankings. But I do want to take this opportunity to point out again that I will be releasing my football selections on Wednesday this week to accommodate the Thanksgiving holiday. That goes for all of Doc's football handicappers, and we want to get our action in early so we can sit back and enjoy an orgy of alcohol, eating and gambling this weekend that would make the Romans blush.

NFL Power Rankings Week 12
by Robert Ferringo - 11/19/2019

Do you remember how early on this season the underdogs were covering the spread at an astronomical and completely unsustainable rate? Well, regression has struck - sort of - and NFL underdogs have been a lot less potent over the last five weeks than in the opening six weeks of the season. Well, some underdogs that is.

NFL Power Rankings Week 11
by Robert Ferringo - 11/12/2019

A tool I have found useful in handicapping college basketball and college football is something I like to call relative conference strength. The basic premise is that you can gauge a team's true strength based on whom they have played and how those teams stack up against the rest of the country. It's a very macro way of looking at the field, rather than focusing on the minutia of matchups and individual players.

NFL Power Rankings Week 10
by Robert Ferringo - 11/5/2019

Despite all of the talk about how the NFL has become primarily a passing league, I have definitely noticed that the pendulum has started to swing back the other way. And now, rather than teams trying to build their rosters and game plans to just outshoot and outscore opponents, we are seeing a return to the fundamental NFL strategy: running the football.

NFL Power Rankings Week 9
by Robert Ferringo - 10/29/2019

Most people I know are in agreement about the product that is NFL football these days: it's pretty awful. The game is a ragged, penalty-filled mess that is routinely interrupted by instant replay reviews, commercials and promotions for network television shows.

NFL Power Rankings Week 8
by Robert Ferringo - 10/22/2019

The NFL has become a game of incompetence. Whether it is officiating errors, coaching and game-management mistakes, or just shockingly poor play, Sundays have become defined by stupidity rather than strategic or athletic excellence. The results have frustrating for bettors, and most professionals I know are starting to dread having to sit through NFL action each week.

NFL Power Rankings Week 7
by Robert Ferringo - 10/15/2019

There is any number of explanations for why underdogs are crushing it at the window each week. Quarterback play, league-wide, has regressed, and that's made everything more topsy-turvy. The sportsbooks have the most difficulty projecting teams early in the season. Defense has become en vogue in the NFL again, and that's led to lower-scoring games. Take your pick of the reason. But the reasons why don't matter. All that matters is that right now the only way to bet the NFL is to take road teams, underdogs and, when possible, road underdogs.

NFL Power Rankings Week 6
by Robert Ferringo - 10/8/2019

I don't know if I have ever seen a wider disparity between the top and the bottom of the NFL. There is still a clear, muddled middle class in the league right now. That's the forced parity that the league loves and the fuel for all of the weekly surprises on the field and at the window. However, if you look at the top eight and the bottom eight teams in the league right now, the variance is stark.

NFL Power Rankings Week 5
by Robert Ferringo - 10/1/2019

After last year's scoring explosion, in which teams combined to average 46.6 points per game, scoring has reverted back down to levels that we've seen only once this decade. With just 44.4 points per game, this season is on pace to be the second-lowest scoring year of the decade. However, this doesn't account to the fact that we are still in the early portion of the season.

NFL Power Rankings Week 4
by Robert Ferringo - 9/24/2019

The week after the season opener is the Overreaction Week. But now we are getting into Hype Week. Despite an extremely limited sample size and some outlier results, it appears that the bobblehead media is ready to make (more) wild, unsubstantiated claims on everything from Buffalo's viability in the AFC East race to Daniel Jones' Hall of Fame prospects.

NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/17/2019

Never forget that football is a war of attrition. It is battle. Football is sport. And it reflects the realities of nature. Football is two male rams smashing horns. It is two rhinos fighting for territory or male lions wrestling for command of the pride. It's primal and brutal.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/10/2019

Obviously, the Patriots are going to win another Super Bowl, beating the Cowboys next February. Miami is going to go 0-16 and get the No. 1 overall pick, and Kyler Murray is going to win the Offensive Rookie of the Year Award. Everything has already been determined after just one week, so we can all just save ourselves some time.